Storyline

The path of Francesca Johnson's future seems destined when an unexpected fork in the road causes her to question everything she had come to expect from life. While her husband and children are away at the Illinois state fair in the summer of 1965, Robert Kincaid happens turn into the Johnson farm and asks Francesca for directions to Roseman Bridge. Francesca later learns that he was in Iowa on assignment from National Geographic magazine. She is reluctant seeing that he's a complete stranger and then she agrees to show him to the bridges and gradually she talks about her life from being a war-bride from Italy which sets the pace for this bittersweet and all-too-brief romance of her life. Through the pain of separation from her secret love and the stark isolation she feels as the details of her life consume her, she writes her thoughts of the four-day love affair which took up three journals. The journals are found by her children after the lawyer was going over Francesca's will and ... Written by
Mark Fleetwood <mfleetwo@mail.coin.missouri.edu>

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Trivia

Goofs

When Francesca is driving with him in his truck to initially show him where the bridge is, there is no sunshine on Robert's shoulders. Suddenly, in the next shot it's on his right shoulder, then the next shot switches to his left and then back again. See more »

Quotes

Caroline:
Who knew that, in between bake sales, my mother was Anaïs Nin?
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User Reviews

The book on which this film is based is a very thin volume, thin in every department. As a matter of fact I gave up after a few pages. The film is something else entirely. Meryl Streep plays an Italian living in rural America and she is out of this world. Her opening scenes at the breakfast table are staggeringly beautiful, it could have been a silent movie, we would've understood and live Francesca's story just by looking into Meryl's beautiful face. Every laugh, every move, every nuance is so Italian and so real that I went to look up her background to see if there was some Italian blood in her. Apparently not, but she reminded me of Anna Magnani and of my mother - she's Italian too, so I should know. Clint Eastwood's performance is tender, powerful and generous. I started going to the movies in the 70's and part of the fascination was to go and see movies with adults doing adult things, behaving and reacting to life the way adults do. "Five Easy Pieces" "Coming Home" "Sophie's Choice" and then the old great old ones from "Sullivan's Travels" to "All About Eve" As a side note I should inform the decision makers that on my second visit to the theater I took five kids with me, two 17 year old boys and three girls, 18, 16 and 16. They went back to see it a few days later with some of their contemporaries. The comment of one of the boys was: "It made me think of things I don't usually think about". He invited his mom to the movies to see "Bridges of Madison County" According to his mother, that was the first time ever, but, as it happens, not the last.

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